Shortly after the double fatality last week, we spoke to an emergency services person who gave us a chilling prediction. In short, he said he and his colleagues were bracing themselves for more road carnage because highway improvements north of Nowra had made the area south of the town so much more accessible.
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Like all emergency services workers, he is sick to the back teeth of being called out to crashes, most of which could have been avoided.
One of his chief concerns is that Nowra was now within two hours of Sydney. Two hours, motorists are told but continue to ignore, is the danger period when it comes to fatigue. Fatigue is a major contributing factor in road crashes.
So, in effect, we are encouraging city drivers to make the trip to the South Coast on a high standard of highway all the way to Jervis Bay Road and, just when they hit the fatigue danger zone, we turn them out onto a stretch of road described by Infrastructure Minister Andrew Constance as “1940s standard”.
One lapse in concentration, a momentary distraction, two much speed, a microsleep can all have catastrophic consequences on an unforgiving stretch of road with very little margin for error.
Despite the best efforts over many years to address driver behaviour and the millions spent on road safety campaigns, blunt statistics show the message isn’t being heard. People are still speeding, drink-driving, using their mobiles and falling asleep at the wheel. They are still losing their own lives and taking the lives of others.
We say enough is enough.
As a community news outlet, our role is to advocate on behalf of our readers, the people we serve. We firmly believe improving highway should be a top priority for all levels of government.
In coming weeks, we will be ramping up a campaign to get watertight commitments from state and federal governments to properly fund safety improvements on the highway.
We will approach other local media outlets and invite them to join the campaign.
The express purpose of this will be to exert pressure on Canberra and Macquarie Street to shelve their differences and get their priorities right and secure funds to make our highway safer.
A united voice is a stronger voice and this issue is urgent.